Monday, August 19: the semester begins!

Today is Monday of Week 1, the first day of the new semester! There is an Orientation Week to help you learn about how this online class works, and you can find all the assignments here: Orientation Week assignments. You have some work due on Tuesday, so I hope you can get started today.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Two Classes | One Set of Announcements. These Announcements are for BOTH the Myth-Folklore class AND the Indian Epics class. Each class has its own reading materials, but the weekly assignments are the same. So, these shared announcements are a way for those of you in Myth-Folklore to learn more about India (a great land of stories!), and also for the people in the Indian Epics class to learn about other storytelling traditions from the Myth class.

Please call me Laura. I will be on a first-name basis with all of you, and I hope you will feel comfortable just calling me Laura.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. Some students have already started blogging, and here's a wonderful picture from Piper's favorite places post, Grand Lake, right here in Oklahoma:


Twitter Stream. Each day I'll share something I saw in the class Twitter stream too. That's how I learned about these Nigerian teenagers making sci-fi videos with their phones; you can read more about them here.


Story of the Day. I'll also share a folktale each day, and this year I'm focusing on aetiological folktales, the story of "how" or "why" something came to be. Today's story is Why the Bear Hibernates, an African American folktale from North Carolina:


Indian Epics Today. I'll also share a character from the world of the Indian Epics each day, starting with Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom and learning. I think that makes her a good character to preside over the first day of class!


Indian Music Video. As Saraswati is the goddess of music, I thought I would share this music video from Maati Baani, a tribute to India's farmers: Saccha Mitr.


Myth Video. And this Crash Course Mythology video might be of interest to those of you in both classes:


Myth-Folklore. From the world of Greek mythology, here is the origin of a word we use today in English: cereal is from the name of the Roman goddess of agriculture, Ceres:


H.E.A.R.T.. As you'll soon figure out (if you have not figured it out already), I am a big word nerd, and I love to read. I hope you will have fun with the reading in these classes too. Here's a Reading-is-Fun poster from Maurice Sendak:


HEART Video. And as a big fan of books, I am of course also a big fan of Bizzell Library. Here's a fun video they made a few years ago about some of the great things you can see and do there (and this video predates some of the new spaces and services they have added in the past year or two):


Event on Campus. For Howdy Week, there will be a Multicultural Food Fair on the South Oval from Noon until 2PM.


Plus, Presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke will be in Oklahoma, visiting Norman and Oklahoma City, today; to keep up with the latest details of his visit, see the OU Daily.

On This Day. Today marks the birthday of Gene Roddenberry in the year 1921 (he died in 1991), and yes, I am a lifelong Star Trek fan, so I have to say: Happy Birthday, Gene Roddenberry, and thank you for creating Star Trek! You can read more about Roddenberry's life and career at Wikipedia. Roddenberry is third from the right in this photo from 1976, watching the Space Shuttle Enterprise.



Check out the Twitter stream for information and fun stuff during the day, or click here for past announcements.